nickintexas
11-20-2011, 09:09 PM
My daughter is nine. She's always been the smart, witty lovable kid that gets 98's in all her classes. Enter fourth grade, and not so much on the 98's. It's not that I'm the kind of parent that is going to freak out over an occasional B, but the drop was pretty drastically from High 90's to everything from low 80's to mid 90's, at least half in the sub-90 mark.
We live in Texas, so yes - they get both percentage and letter grades here even in 4th grade.
I realize this won't affect her college applications directly. She's nine. However, I'm concerned about the larger implications involved - that she's losing focus and becoming easily distracted. I've had one parent-teacher conference, and communicate regularly with one teacher by email (her homeroom teacher/math/reading teacher - they rotate through three teachers). I've also requested another parent teacher conference. Most of her work that comes home she does very well on, because we talk through it and if I sense hesitation in my questions I assume the paper probably needs for me to check it. However, at least half her graded work is done in class, and I can't monitor that.
Any advice is appreciated. She's always been the kid who just goes and goes and laughs her way through doing great in school and life, so the change is pretty... hard for me. Not quite sure what to do. I went to a parent teacher conference 6 weeks ago and I thought we had it handled by having me check her work better, but that only affects half of her work that's done at home. My thought I had it handled didn't work out so well.
It's just me and her, so "ask your wife if she has any perspective on.." will be a completely unhelpful response :) Her mom isn't around. Just the two mousketeers.
Nick
We live in Texas, so yes - they get both percentage and letter grades here even in 4th grade.
I realize this won't affect her college applications directly. She's nine. However, I'm concerned about the larger implications involved - that she's losing focus and becoming easily distracted. I've had one parent-teacher conference, and communicate regularly with one teacher by email (her homeroom teacher/math/reading teacher - they rotate through three teachers). I've also requested another parent teacher conference. Most of her work that comes home she does very well on, because we talk through it and if I sense hesitation in my questions I assume the paper probably needs for me to check it. However, at least half her graded work is done in class, and I can't monitor that.
Any advice is appreciated. She's always been the kid who just goes and goes and laughs her way through doing great in school and life, so the change is pretty... hard for me. Not quite sure what to do. I went to a parent teacher conference 6 weeks ago and I thought we had it handled by having me check her work better, but that only affects half of her work that's done at home. My thought I had it handled didn't work out so well.
It's just me and her, so "ask your wife if she has any perspective on.." will be a completely unhelpful response :) Her mom isn't around. Just the two mousketeers.
Nick